One Town's Decades Long Struggle For Cleaner Air

From her front porch, Collette Williams can see the lights of U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works, between the houses across the street. She can pick out the different colors of smoke and steam emanating from "the mill."

"That's like a white smoke," she says on an overcast afternoon. "And then over there, like a dark smoke."

Western Pennsylvania's steel industry may be a shell of what once was. But the Clairton works, about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, remains North America's largest producer of coke, a key component in making steel. Coke is basically pure carbon, made from baking coal at high temperatures, a process that can create a lot of pollution.

On this day the fumes aren't too bad, owing to rain that has just come through. But on some days the rotten egg odor of sulfur is inescapable, a rich, earthy smell that sticks to the back of the throat. What's in the air is worse, especially for her son, SaVaughn, 13.

The sixth-grader has persistent asthma. He takes four medications daily, a regimen of inhalers, nebulizers and pills to calm the inflammation that can make it hard for him to catch his breath.